The Chapel
The oldest remaining building on the campus, the so-called Chapel, was constructed during the economic boom brokered by silk and salt baron Kaspar Stockalper in the 1660s and 1670s--a time when the population of Brig and its environs may have reached 1500 souls but had to grow to accommodate the 5000 jobs Stockalper's trade empire demanded. The newly rising Catholic Society of Jesus--called the Jesuits--had received a big boost from local hero and Jesuit co-founder, Peter Faber--a priest who had been a roommate of Francis Xavier while students in Paris (they both received their Master of Arts degrees from the University of Paris on the same day in 1530) and a roommate of Ignatius of Loyola. (Faber was only recently canonized a Catholic saint, in 2013, by Pope Francis I.) The new "tribe" of foot-traveling, educated preacher-teachers, was quick to spread into western Switzerland. With the economic and population boom of the 1660s, Brig-Glis felt an immediate need for both clergy and church structures. The Society of Jesuits arrived first and then helped orchestrate the construction of several barn-like structures around the fringes of Brig-Glis, most of them on the hillsides of the rising Alpine foothills, like this one just off of the Simplon Pass Road, on the approach to Tiernen.
By the end of the century, the boom had gone bust, the jealous local barons had deposed Stockalper, the trade baron having to retract his trade connections. The Jesuits stayed. The Chapel--the Church of St. Ignatius--found itself almost empty most days, even for Sunday and holiday services. Revenue needed for building upkeep dwindled. The Chapel went through periods in which it was used for housing the sick and poor, rented out for housing of livestock, as well as rented for grain and storage for the merchant families next door (depending on the health of their own business).
When the Order purchased the property from the Order of Jesus, the Chapel stood strong but empty. It had been empty for a quarter century and the walls were cracking and nothing remained of the Catholic accoutrements formerly used to decorate and serve its interior. Thanks to it's original barn-like construction choices, the Chapel proved an easy fix. Plus, not being a religious organization, the Order had toyed with the idea of tearing the old monstrosity down and starting from scratch on ground zero. But a spirit of preservation and honoring the past prevailed. The Chapel was incorporated into the quadrangular design of the new school. Conjoined to Engineering Hall via the Dining Hall and to Merchant House via the Polenstrasse gate and, later, the Gatehouse, the Chapel retained two points of entry/exit: one small door three steps up from ground level in the southern end of the Quad-entry tunnel formed by the Gatehouse and a large set of double doors set into an archway within the Gothic walls of Dining Hall at its northwest corner. The former main entrance on the east wall of the building (which caused quite a stir back in the day as all worship of Jesus and His Father was supposed to be directed toward the Holy Land--toward the east) had been blocked up, all remnants and memory erased with a fresh outer coat of smooth concrete around the outside.
The few windows that existed were unusually small (for a church proper)--due to quick construction and low funds--but had been maintained with simple colored glass--mostly ambers, yellows, and shades of lighter greens. Electricity was never installed--which made morning Chapel and Meditation a low-lit (usually candle) affair. Also, the staff and students were always grateful for the layers of woolens in their dress code when sitting for an hour or two with their breath visible in front of them. Still, the Chapel never got too cold (rarely below freezing temperatures) though it rarely got warm, either (the thick stone walls served more to fend off daytime summer heat than absorb it--this is probably due to the relatively few hours of direct sun on the south-but-uphill-facing campus--except in summer time.)
When the the Order acquired the Chapel in 1806, it was decided that its present structure would remain as is with structural shoring up of the buttresses and windows occurring while street-side entrances were removed and sealed. This latter act was intended to redirect all ingress and egress to and from the Chapel to the two doors within campus--one to the Dining Hall portion of Engineering Hall (soon to be constructed) and the other to the vestibule beneath the archway over the Polenstrasse entrance to the school grounds. Over the years continued maintenance--mostly cosmetic, plaster, white wash, roof structure and roofing tiles, as well as window replacements--have been kept after proactively.
The outlying structures that came with the property in the original purchase from the Luzern-based Society of Jesus included a simple two-story rectory with ground-floor kitchens and attached animal stables and a separate but large two-story dormitory with ground floor hospital and stables and storage. These were immediately razed to make way for the more modern and school-appropriate buildings that were loosely modeled after the "Mod Quad" at Oxford University's Merton College.
The oldest remaining building on the campus, the so-called Chapel, was constructed during the economic boom brokered by silk and salt baron Kaspar Stockalper in the 1660s and 1670s--a time when the population of Brig and its environs may have reached 1500 souls but had to grow to accommodate the 5000 jobs Stockalper's trade empire demanded. The newly rising Catholic Society of Jesus--called the Jesuits--had received a big boost from local hero and Jesuit co-founder, Peter Faber--a priest who had been a roommate of Francis Xavier while students in Paris (they both received their Master of Arts degrees from the University of Paris on the same day in 1530) and a roommate of Ignatius of Loyola. (Faber was only recently canonized a Catholic saint, in 2013, by Pope Francis I.) The new "tribe" of foot-traveling, educated preacher-teachers, was quick to spread into western Switzerland. With the economic and population boom of the 1660s, Brig-Glis felt an immediate need for both clergy and church structures. The Society of Jesuits arrived first and then helped orchestrate the construction of several barn-like structures around the fringes of Brig-Glis, most of them on the hillsides of the rising Alpine foothills, like this one just off of the Simplon Pass Road, on the approach to Tiernen.
By the end of the century, the boom had gone bust, the jealous local barons had deposed Stockalper, the trade baron having to retract his trade connections. The Jesuits stayed. The Chapel--the Church of St. Ignatius--found itself almost empty most days, even for Sunday and holiday services. Revenue needed for building upkeep dwindled. The Chapel went through periods in which it was used for housing the sick and poor, rented out for housing of livestock, as well as rented for grain and storage for the merchant families next door (depending on the health of their own business).
When the Order purchased the property from the Order of Jesus, the Chapel stood strong but empty. It had been empty for a quarter century and the walls were cracking and nothing remained of the Catholic accoutrements formerly used to decorate and serve its interior. Thanks to it's original barn-like construction choices, the Chapel proved an easy fix. Plus, not being a religious organization, the Order had toyed with the idea of tearing the old monstrosity down and starting from scratch on ground zero. But a spirit of preservation and honoring the past prevailed. The Chapel was incorporated into the quadrangular design of the new school. Conjoined to Engineering Hall via the Dining Hall and to Merchant House via the Polenstrasse gate and, later, the Gatehouse, the Chapel retained two points of entry/exit: one small door three steps up from ground level in the southern end of the Quad-entry tunnel formed by the Gatehouse and a large set of double doors set into an archway within the Gothic walls of Dining Hall at its northwest corner. The former main entrance on the east wall of the building (which caused quite a stir back in the day as all worship of Jesus and His Father was supposed to be directed toward the Holy Land--toward the east) had been blocked up, all remnants and memory erased with a fresh outer coat of smooth concrete around the outside.
The few windows that existed were unusually small (for a church proper)--due to quick construction and low funds--but had been maintained with simple colored glass--mostly ambers, yellows, and shades of lighter greens. Electricity was never installed--which made morning Chapel and Meditation a low-lit (usually candle) affair. Also, the staff and students were always grateful for the layers of woolens in their dress code when sitting for an hour or two with their breath visible in front of them. Still, the Chapel never got too cold (rarely below freezing temperatures) though it rarely got warm, either (the thick stone walls served more to fend off daytime summer heat than absorb it--this is probably due to the relatively few hours of direct sun on the south-but-uphill-facing campus--except in summer time.)
When the the Order acquired the Chapel in 1806, it was decided that its present structure would remain as is with structural shoring up of the buttresses and windows occurring while street-side entrances were removed and sealed. This latter act was intended to redirect all ingress and egress to and from the Chapel to the two doors within campus--one to the Dining Hall portion of Engineering Hall (soon to be constructed) and the other to the vestibule beneath the archway over the Polenstrasse entrance to the school grounds. Over the years continued maintenance--mostly cosmetic, plaster, white wash, roof structure and roofing tiles, as well as window replacements--have been kept after proactively.
The outlying structures that came with the property in the original purchase from the Luzern-based Society of Jesus included a simple two-story rectory with ground-floor kitchens and attached animal stables and a separate but large two-story dormitory with ground floor hospital and stables and storage. These were immediately razed to make way for the more modern and school-appropriate buildings that were loosely modeled after the "Mod Quad" at Oxford University's Merton College.
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